The Whole Enchilada

 

I had another harrowing experience the other day. So far this blog has been documenting tragedies and I guess this is no exception.

A dog ate my chicken the other day. Huey Lewis the Chicken died of her wounds (with a little help from my compassionate husband Ryan) on December 13, 2009.

She was a good chicken. One of our better layers. She was the only black chicken of six in the coop, it sounds funny, but it's true. Unlike the other chickens, three fairly tame white Wynandotes and two semi feral Rhode Island reds, Huey was an Black Austraulorp, and everything on her was black. Her glossy feathers (iridescent in certain lights) were black, her beak was black, everything on her was black but her pernicious little red comb, sticking up defiantly from the top of her head. We used to joke that she was our Radical Black Separatist chicken, named by Ryan after Huey of the Boondocks, who himself was named debatebly after Huey Lewis and the News. Like her namesake, she stood out from the rest of the flock, that Huey. But the most striking thing about her was her eyes.

Again, unlike the other chickens, Huey's eyes were BLACK. Not only black at the pupil like the amber eyed other chickens, but at the iris. They were like huge liquid pools of obsidian, and she would blink them at you in such a wild eyed way you were forced to check yourself before just nudging her away with your foot when it came to be feeding time. She looked back at you. This bird was not the bird the guilty omnivore would be the most likely to eat. And yet I just such an omnivore, did eat her. After the dog got a crack that is.

It sounds terrible I know. But what were we supposed to do?

Before those righteous vegetarians among you dismiss us as barbarians, eating their dead pet, let me explain.

The back story:

December 13, 2009 started out like any other December day in Albuquerque, sunny and cold. I went as I did many mornings, approximately every other one, to go check on, feed, water, get the eggs from and let out the chickens. These mornings though literally freezing cold (the chicken water, the fish pond, and the dogs water all covered with a thin layer of ice)I got up, took my one egg, and let out the chickens. This was not an unusual day. In summer the I would wake up to up to five eggs, one from each of the layers, but perhaps because of the cold weather we had been reduced to getting only one. Maybe it was Huey's...

At any rate I let them out and went back in the house. Ordinarily at that time I would have been cleaning the house and preparing for the communal brunch we have been hosting every Sunday morning with only two exceptions since May. But on this day, December the 13, for the third time ever, brunch was canceled. Or at least postponed. The week prior, a normal brunch where as usual everyone descended after 11 am with various things, vegetables, berries, leftovers and the like, we had planned to have this day, December 13, be our first annual non-denominational Holiday Linner. (Linner or course being a cross between lunch and dinner as opposed to breakfast and lunch)

So that cold bright morning I woke up early and sent the text canceling brunch and inviting everyone to Linner that was to be held graciously by fellow brunchie Sammo at his lovely Nob Hill house. As of yet, I had no idea what I was going to bring to this meal, and haven't even thought of it.

An hour or two later, I was awoken from luxurious Sunday morning sleep it (a rare occasion) by the first of the brunch guests who didn't get the text. Travis, another brunch regular, doesn't even have a phone and showed up as he usually does empty handed but ready to cut and cook whatever showed up that day (he is a great sou chef and cook and often is the one doing the preparing). We were just sitting down to coffe when the doorbell rang again, and Krista and Kevin and their dog Pondi arrive, (K and K HAVE a phone but with their new Christmas Iphones did not receive the text on their old outmoded phones.)

There we are, all having coffee and laughing at the decently well attended canceled brunch, when one of the usually happily playing dogs makes a tremendously aggressive sounding sound in the backyard. We all startle but I jump to my feet, " Shit! I forgot to put in the chickens!" I say as I sprint out the door followed by all of the guests and my trusty new husband Ryan who probably already knows what is about to happen next.

Heart sinking, I run around into the back yard. I am stopped dead in my tracks not by death but little Huey, mauled and unable to stand, in a blizzard of black feathers and blood, still living and looking up at my painfully with her big black eyes. What happens next is hazy for me, as I my eyes are immediately covered by first my own and then Ryan's big soft hands, as I involuntarily wail in horror and sadness right in front of my horrified guests.

Pondi is a young dog, a happy go lucky Mutt with questionable heritage, saved as our dogs are from the pound by Krista and Kevin when he was just a few months old. But unlike our dogs, Pondi was not raised with chickens, moreover he was not raised with stern reprimands every time he so much looked at the chickens, and as this was the first chicken he had ever seen, the results were predictable and terrible.

Krista, a vegetarian, was especially, perhaps equally horrified, and as Kevin and Travis blocked our view as Ryan broke Huey's neck, Krista and I held each other and as I cried the terrific sobs of a woman who had not yet managed to handle the death of any and all animals.

And then Kevin held Krista as she cried, and Ryan held me, petting my head exactly as you would the a little girl who lost her pet.

After this we all sat on the porch in stunned near silence. Though we are mostly quit I asked for a cigarette, and K, neither of which who smoke bought me a whole pack.

So as Ryan and Travis set to work plucking her and gutting her, Krista and Kevin and I sat and bonded. We talked not about death but about life, about energy and the cycle of life, the way that things come and go and are set in motion even before they happen, and how ironic it was that this was to happen now, the day of the canceled brunch and the Linner I had not yet begun to cook for. And there I had it, I would cook Huey for Linner. It seemed the only fitting thing to do, to not waste this small death.

I wasn't mad, just sad. It could have happened with our own dogs at some point, and it did happen and there was nothing that could be done. It was no more their negligence than my own. I think we are all closer after that experience.

Anyway, later that afternoon, the two Ks and newly initiated Pondi had left, and I stood by the kitchen table, mixing my own almond quinoa stuffing, stuffing the bird and getting her ready to roast. Later still I put on my cocktail attire, brought the freshly dressed bird to Sammo's and put her in the oven to roast.

She was delicious, exactly as you would expect a homegrown chicken raised cage free and with love to taste. Except for her thighs, which unlike hens raised without access to exercise or even sunlight in battery cages were tough, muscular and virtually inedible.

I still miss seeing my little black chicken. The coop looks different now with out timid little Huey pecking away, a tiny black shadow in spite of herself and all of the other chickens. But come Spring, if K&K don't buy me a new chicken first, Ryan says I get to break the "no more animals" rule (we already had these five, now four hens, one rooster, two dogs, two goldfish, two parakeets and one cat on this unhuge urban Albuquerque property) and breed out some chicks!

So there you have it folks, life, death and rebirth. It's all part of the whole (chicken?) enchilada.

Thank you Huey. You were a good chicken. And delicious.

Cave of the Clan Bear: On Fate and Fragility

My father in law had an aneurysm the other day.
A sub arachnoid hemorrhage to be exact (as he described it, he's a Psychiatrist himself and knows these things, even still)

I say new father in law because my husband and I had just got married two days prior. And he was there, in costume no less. With the rest of the entire clan. Their side of the family is as much a tribe or perhaps a joyous cult as anything else. Anyway they were all there, some of them literally in tails. It was a Halloween wedding,but more on this later. That is story for a different blog. Ken. This one is for you.


Let me say a few things I wouldn't say to your face, but hope some day you will read them. And maybe weep.

When I first met you I wasn't sure what to think of you. You didn't smile and seemed to look at me sometimes down your nose in such a way I imagine you examine your patients when you think they're not looking or are trying to pretend to reserve judgment.

I could tell you were are smart man. A powerful man. But I had and still have some issues with MEN and authority so I too perhaps sized you up. And was vigilant.

I can imagine what you must have thought, who is this wild red haired woman who came to seize the heart of your youngest son, your cub, the scatterbrained rascal, your golden boy away from you? What harlot harpy is this?

Perhaps it wasn't all that bad. But you weren't pleased when I told you the lovely green garnish of herbs on your Christmas lamb roast was in fact cilantro and not the Italian parsley you swore it was, and later claimed the grocer had mislabeled.

You didn't fool me. But I don't think I fooled you either. My attempts to suck up were viewed under the same downward but even gaze as my obvious foibles, nervous and LOUD talking, over emotionality, sometimes self aggrandizement, other times painful self deprecation. A wild vacillation between extremes in contrast to your well cultivated composure.

You to the world say I AM A ROCK and the world listens. But I have seen you cry when describing the difficulty of transitioning into this, your fortieth year of marriage and also and the brunch before the wedding of your youngest son, now my husband, at the fact that after 30 years you finally realized your little rascal had become a man.

And I see you now, as today, with an eye patch to cover your newly soured eye, struggling to sit up or lie down or get to the bathroom, reliant on the help you used to seem to abhor, having your son shave you and not being the master of your own and perhaps some other peoples destiny. But still with some mystical air of authority, and sometimes that winning wry grin and attendent bit of wit or sarcasm that lets me think that you're gonna be ok. That you are ok. That you are still Ken.

I have caught your blood children look at you gingerly like you would great wounded bear, and seem to be surprised that on closer inspection that you are only human, not the monolith you but weeks ago appeared. You are more humble now, vulnerable, more grateful than I have ever seen you. And I like it.

I feel closer to you than I ever have. And this event, this life changing moment that has forced all of us to confront and reconsider the strong thin twines of FATE and human fragility,for all its pain, discomfort, loneliness, loss of control, short distance between you and the long hall of death, the abject fear, the hallucinations and delusions that have haunted let me say that already I think I have seen something change in you, bloom perhaps. The seeds of a greater humanity.

You were a great man before this Ken. You are perhaps a greater man now. I hope you will begin to see it too.

Your wife and children adore you, you bear of a man.

Your blood children as well as others.

I to, great one, am grateful to be a part of your clan.

And I hope you enjoyed those cillantro enchiladas I made for you.

California Dreamer

It was around ten o clock in Albuquerque when I got the news. My Best Friend Bobbie told me on Facebook chat. She said she had news. Ben Spurgin died the other day. Her bittersweet ex-boyfriend. Boy genius. Idiot Savant. Chuck Norris Enthusiast. Heavy metal guitarist.Composer.Video Gamer. Visionary. Drug Addict.

When Bobbie game me the news it didn't seem real. How I had all but forgotten the man. Oh But how can you forget a name like Spurgin? Or a man like that?

I guess we had just lost touch, spent 3 years lost in our separate little lives, no even any more occasional blips on Myspace. I think I wished him happy birthday last time. He was thirty one years young.

And suddenly, he is gone.

Heroin. The white pony? The dark horse. He rode this seductive beast for who knows how long, rode and fell off, got trampled under the hooves. A tragedy. Especially for a man who dreamed as big as him. Larger than life. He wrote rock operas. Where is he now? Do the angels play Iron Maiden?


When Ben left he took with him a tiny thread stuck to his shoe that I didn't realize was unraveling the screen between me and a whole section of my life. The life we shared in San Francisco that is only half shod memories now.

Bobbie Sue was my best friend. I remember when she first met Ben. I was living in Seattle at the time with my lover Jason. Bobbie and I had been single and fancy free and used to go to Linda's on Pine and drink Black Labels and look at men, but I was suddenly out of the market and Bobbie was lonely. It had all happened pretty fast and she had begun to get bitter and loose hope when she met him. She was so proud of herself because she had talked to stranger on the bus as I often did and the stranger was Ben. He wound up getting off at her stop and walking her home I think and it was not long before the two were pretty inseparable.

I remember when I first met him too, he was lanky and tall with a little paunch and a died black mop of hair with sandy red roots. He was less handsome than charming but he sweet long face with heavy black glasses perched over milky blue eyes and light eyelashes. He has a funny, easy way about him and seemed crazy about her. He dressed like buddy holly in funny old sweaters and button up shirts and cords and sneakers but dressed like a rock star when he played with his goth band. He read exclusively old pulp novels like the kind you get at garage sales except they were all Post Apocalyptic. He could quote the Wrath of Kahn like the bible. She was a goner. It wasn't long before he moved in. We would go over there a lot, Jason and I, two couples in love and it was great most of the time until he started doing drugs again...It was meth at first, he said it helped him think.

He would stay up all night making music and doing his flash animation or playing video games and then would sleep all day. We didn't come over much anymore, and I hardly saw him awake. When he was awake he was always talking about the next big gig, the next dream, the next city they would live in, the next business they would start.

So when Jason and I had finally saved enough to move to Cali on a lark and a whim to live La Vie Boheme in San Fransisco she and Ben weren't far behind. They had been involved in some hard times and needed somewhere to start over, to be free again. And where is better to be free than San Fran? Even if it was the Tenderloin...Oh the Tenderloin.

We had found a little apartment there in an old building not to far from Civic Center and the trolley turn around on Polk street. It was small all had old pipes but it was San Fransisco and it
was ours. We had a futon and an overstuffed chair with an ottoman and we were broke but we were happy and in love. It was the spark of spring in San Fran and Seattle was still in the grey drudges of Winter. Bobbie sue was miserable. The SpeakEasy she worked in got busted up and
So they moved in with us that April. Just months after we got there ourselves. And we lived all together in a tiny dingy studio apartment on O'Farrell street, in a sea of convenience stores, delicious and cheap ethnic eateries, Peep Show Parlours, crack dens and broken dreamers.

Ben wasn't working, but he was off the drugs and determined to be a famous musician and flash artist. Every day he had a new idea that was going to be the big one. Every week a new job lead that would really pull him through this time. It was going to be "SWEEEEETTTTT..." as he would always say.

In the mean time the four of us were very nearly starving. We had two jobs between the four of us and three cats. We once all went through all of our pockets purses and couches to get enough money to buy two boxes of generic macaroni and cheese to share amongst us. We shared cat litter and treasured every cigarette, often splitting one four ways.

Bobbie and him weren't working out. None of us were after a while. Living four people in a studio does things to you. Especially in that neighborhood. At night the hotel across the streets fire alarm would go off almost every night. But during the day the sun poured in the big old windows and you could hear the sounds of children playing in the community center lot down below. And there had been good times too. For a little while we were all California dreamin'. We used to dress up in crazy costumes go out on the town or cook extravagant meals made of leftovers and drink Miller High Life out of crystal goblets Bobbie got at a thrift store. We laughed a lot and Jason and Ben would jam together on the guitar.


After two weeks of this though, or was it two months? It all blends together...it is so like a dream now...things started to go sour. Bobbie and Ben started snipping at each other. So did Jason and I. No one had any space. Bobbie was depressed and Ben was despondent. Jason was restless and I was pulling out my hair trying to keep the peace. Eventually we got enough money together to get them their own department. I think I paid half their deposit in exchange for a painting of Bobbies. For a while there things looked to be looking up.

Their new apartment was beautiful, just down the hall, apartment 205. They had a bay window looking down on the neighbors courtyard. Ben had his guitar and Bobbie had her old record player that used to belong to her dad.

They seemed ok for a while. We were all better for it. But they broke up anyway. And Jason and I shortly thereafter. All the poverty and stress and scraping by and clamoring for space had already sunk in to deep. No one was happy. And then we had this crazy idea. It was probably mine. And so I moved into 204 with Bobbie, and Ben moved into 202 with Jason.

And things got a little better again. Bobbie and me would do art long into the night and dance to Neutral Milk Hotel on the record player. The boys would play video games in their dirty socks and record songs together. Ben found a freelance job and got in a band.

He lost weight and looked happy. And we had some good talks sometimes, and sometimes it was fun to go over and hang out with the boys. And sometimes we wouldn't go over there for days and there just wasn't enough room in the world for the four of us.

And finally Bobbie Sue got tired of it. She packed the van and left for Sonorra to go live with her mother. Ben moved somewhere else with Jason and I moved to Portrero hill, a nice suburban family neighborhood on a hill overlooking the twinkling city, far away from the crack and the sounds of the city that would howl and honk and murmur around the complex all night long.

And we all kind of lost touch then for awhile. I hardly ever saw Jason or Ben. Six months later I moved back to Seattle and it was suddenly hard to believe that we all used to sit together and share two servings of mashed potatoes with them and it would be the first meal they'd eaten all day.

And Ben met a new girl and seemed like he was doing great. I ran into him once at the Mission Goodwill and he looked happy and was wearing a Vintage suit jacket and a grin all full of his next get rich scheme. He said he was moving back to Seattle, or Boulder or the moon and I believed him.

Ben could sell you anything. He was a "wild and crazy guy".I can just hear him say this perfectly.He was great with voices and celebrity impersonations.
And now he's gone.

Your mother misses you Ben.
So do lots of people.

Come back next time when you can stay a little longer.

And stay off the dark horse.